The Abduction

DAY THREE

The morning sun filtered through the shutters of the spacious master suite on the second floor of Six Magnolia Lane. Elizabeth stirred under a thick down comforter in the tall king-sized four-poster bed that was accessible only by wooden steps. A faint smile crossed her lips.

Not guilty on all counts.

She rolled over and groaned. Her body was sore. Her head was groggy, like she had a hangover, but she didn’t remember having anything to drink last night. It was probably just the trial; a long trial always left her physically and mentally exhausted, especially after coming down from the adrenaline high of victory.

Twelve good citizens with the mental range of a windshield wiper.

Was today Saturday? Or Sunday? Must be Sunday. John and Kate probably had the children at church. She did not attend church; religion and the law were the opiates of the masses in the twenty-first century, holding the peasants at bay with their firm faith in God and justice. Elizabeth Brice knew better. Her faith in the justice of the law had ended five years out of law school, late for most lawyers, and she had not prayed to God since…

Yesterday?

Did she pray yesterday?

Elizabeth tried to shake her head clear of the fog. She took a deep breath and realized she was hungry. Very hungry. When had she last eaten? She couldn’t remember. A big breakfast on Sunday morning while the others were at church would be nice, a quiet time to drink coffee, read the paper, and relive her courtroom victory-there might even be an article about the stunning Shay verdict! Thus inspired, she stretched, threw off the comforter, and rolled out of bed.

She hit the wood floor hard.

What the hell? Her legs were tangled in her pantyhose… The hose was ripped and shredded… She pulled dried brown leaves from one leg of the torn hose… Why was one leg off?… Why was she sleeping in her pantyhose?… Why were her legs dirty and streaked with fresh scratch marks?… And her arms… And her hands… Nails broken… Clothes dirty and torn… Why was she sleeping in her clothes?… She touched her face

… Why had she gone to bed without cleaning her face of makeup?… What the hell was going on?

A nauseous tide washed over her. She crawled on her hands and knees to the front windows, dragging one leg of her pantyhose behind her like a bridal veil, knelt up, and peeked through the shutters. Down below, out front of her house, were police cars, TV trucks, cameras, and people. The media circus. She slumped against the wall. She remembered now.

Grace was gone.

Downstairs, Ben entered the kitchen from outside. Kate and Sylvia were busy cooking enough breakfast for a battalion, and the smell of pancakes, sausage, eggs, and biscuits lured a steady stream of cops and FBI agents to the kitchen.

Ben had woken at dawn after only a few hours of fitful sleep. He had heard the back door, Kate leaving for early Mass to do what Irish-Catholic women have done for centuries in the face of famine, poverty, pestilence, war, and evil: pray. He had showered and dressed then gone outside and watched the sun rise over the trees, the start of another day without Gracie-and the first day knowing that money would not save her.

Now Ben was trying to pour a cup of coffee, but he was fighting the morning shakes. Kate took the coffee pot from him and poured then walked the cup and saucer over to the breakfast table without a word. Ben sat down, held the cup with both hands, and sipped the coffee. Five years since she had made his morning coffee, but Kate remembered the routine; there was enough caffeine in this coffee to defeat the mother of all hangovers. But Ben Brice had not surrendered to the bottle last night.

Sam sat across the table. He was still wearing the Boston Red Sox uniform, but he now had a blue scarf wrapped around his head. He was alternating between taking syrupy bites of his pancakes and reciting lines as if acting out roles in a play.

“Wait! You have to take me to shore. According to the Code of the Order of the Brethren-”

Sam turned slightly as if facing another character; his voice changed.

“First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement. So I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirates’ code to apply and you’re not. And thirdly, the code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner.”

Ben looked at Kate by the stove. She said, “Movie dialogue. He’s got John’s memory. He can recite entire movies verbatim.”

Sam continued: “So that’s it then. That’s the secret grand adventure of the infamous Jack Sparrow. You spent three days lying on a beach drinking rum!”

Sam gestured as if his knife and fork were bottles.

“Welcome to the Caribbean, luv.”

Kate said, “Sam, is that from a PG-13 movie?”

Sam froze, his mouth full, his arms still outstretched, and his eyes suddenly wide as if he’d been caught red-handed. His eyes darted to Ben. He decided to save his grandson again.

“The Red Sox are your team?”

Kate shook her head and turned back to the stove; Sam turned back to his pancakes and said, “After the IPO.”

“What?”

“Dad’s gonna buy the Red Sox for me, after he’s a billionaire.”

“Really?”

“Yep.” Sam took a huge bite of pancakes-his cheek was now bulging like a baseball player’s with a wad of chewing tobacco-and said, “So how much money does the cretin want?”

“Who?”

“The man that took Gracie.”

Ben glanced over at Kate. “Oh. He hasn’t said yet.”

Sam sighed. “Well, I wish he’d shit or get off the pot.”

“Sam!” Kate said.

Sam shrugged. “Yeah, then Dad can write a check and Gracie can come home.”

“Our town’s a damn safe place to call home!”

Across town, Police Chief Paul Ryan was standing in the mayor’s office, looking at the mayor’s broad back, and listening to the mayor’s whiny voice as His Honor pleaded with a Dallas newspaper reporter not to write a negative story about Post Oak, Texas. But as if his mind were repeatedly pressing the ALT CH button on the remote control, his thoughts kept switching back and forth between dark images of a little girl he didn’t know lying dead somewhere and the bald back of the mayor’s head, wondering how much hair spray it took to keep his comb-over in place. Paul Ryan never trusted men who combed over.

The mayor never came in on a Sunday and never early on any day of the week. But this Sunday, Ryan had arrived at seven and been immediately summoned to the mayor’s office. He knew the mayor would not be pleased, what with the town just getting over the heroin OD at the high school, and now this. Bad for business, heroin in the high school and kidnappings at the park. And the mayor was all about business.

Theirs was a tenuous relationship at best. Ryan was a holdover from the old days, back before the Dallas developers had discovered their sleepy little town forty miles north of the city and had bought up the open land he used to hunt as a kid and carved it up into exclusive gated communities promising peace and prosperity, bait to Boomers fleeing the ills of urban life. And the Boomers had come, arriving in their Beemers and Lexuses and Hummers like fire ants in the backyard-one day they’re not even here, the next day they’ve taken over the goddamned place. Ten years ago this had been a farming community with a land bank and a feed store; today it had a Victoria’s Secret and a Starbucks.

Paul Ryan hated the Boomers.

But the mayor had welcomed them with open arms. Because the mayor owned the land, or damn near most of it, inherited from his daddy or acquired at foreclosure for pennies on the dollar during the drought years when the farmers couldn’t keep up their payments to the bank, which the mayor and his daddy before him owned. Paul Ryan’s father had committed suicide less than a year after the mayor’s father foreclosed the farm.

Paul sighed. The mayor was a short, pudgy bastard who couldn’t even make the high school football team that Paul Ryan had starred on. But now, just like the mayor’s daddy had held the note on the Ryan family farm, the mayor held the note on Paul Ryan’s career, a career he could foreclose at any time: the town charter expressly stated that the police chief served at the pleasure of the mayor. And the mayor was not pleased. He hung up the phone and glared at Ryan.

“Paul, why the hell did you bring in the FBI?”

“To find the girl! The Feds got more experience and a helluva lot more resources than we got.”

“Yeah, but they don’t got jurisdiction!”

“FBI helps local police in all child abductions. They bring a lot to the table, Mayor.”

“They bring the media to my town!” The mayor pointed a fat finger at Ryan. “Paul, you either find that girl alive or you find her dead, but I want her found, I want someone arrested, I want this deal closed in forty-eight hours or you’ll be a goddamn security guard at the Wal-Mart!”

FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux dodged the little Brice boy as he entered the kitchen for a cup of coffee. He knew the caffeine would only inflame his prostate, but a little girl was missing and he needed a shot of caffeine to get sharp. He had gone to the motel at midnight and just returned with an empty gut. He would normally lose ten pounds over the course of an abduction investigation. Hell of a way to diet.

Devereaux was about to walk out when the grandmother shoved a plate of food at him. The smell reminded him of his own grandmother’s breakfasts back on the farm in Louisiana. He figured it was better to eat her food than donuts all day. So he sat across the breakfast table from the grandfather; they acknowledged each other with grim nods. The grandfather’s hands exhibited the morning tremors of an alcoholic. After Devereaux had eaten half his stack of pancakes in silence, the grandfather said, “Why would he leave her shorts in the woods?”

Devereaux was trying to think of an appropriate answer other than because he’s a sick bastard when the father rushed through the kitchen looking like he had just rolled out of bed; his black glasses were riding low and lopsided on his face, one side of his curly hair was pressed flat, the other side was standing on end, and he was still wearing the same dirty clothes. He exited through the back door without a word. Minutes later, the father returned and walked directly over to Devereaux; he held out a camcorder like the one Devereaux had given the wife for Christmas.

“I forgot,” he said.

“Forgot what, Mr. Brice?”

“I taped Gracie’s game.”

She was Michael Jordan in soccer shorts.

The other girls seemed like typical ten-year-olds, awkward, plodding, stumbling at times, while Gracie seemed… well, graceful, elegant even, her gait smooth and rhythmic, gliding down the field in her white shoes, then a sudden burst of speed propelling her past the defenders, all the while making the white ball seem like a puppet on a string, dancing in front of her, now to her side, then abruptly racing ahead on her unspoken command. And she owned her opponents equally, moving them about like pawns on a chessboard, a slight shoulder fake sending the defender charging one way only to watch helplessly as Gracie spun off in the opposite direction, where the ball was somehow waiting. Natural athletes always made it look easy. Gracie Ann Brice was a natural athlete.

Watching the victim running up and down the field on the videotape-her smile, her spirit, her soccer skills-FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux wanted to find this girl alive so much it hurt. The victim was not that photograph distributed to the media; she was a real live little girl who only two days before had not a care in the world, smiling and laughing and playing soccer. And play she could. As his daughter would say, Gracie’s got game.

She had captivated her audience.

Four FBI agents, the father, and the grandparents stood facing the nine-foot-wide projector screen built into the wall of the media room, hypnotized by the victim’s image and all too aware that they were likely watching the last moments of her life. The tape was playing with remarkable clarity-Agent Stevens, who was manning the camcorder connected to the TV, had said something about it being recorded in “high def”-and had captured the sights and sounds of the game: the girls playing, a referee’s whistle, background noises, then suddenly a loud cheer and “Run, Gracie, run!” and the father’s voice: “Lou, I’m hard-core about thirty bucks a share!”

The camera abruptly swung from the field to the crowded parking lot in the distance and just as abruptly back to the field, creating a stream of blurred images. The victim appeared in frame again, up close, making a face at the camera as she ran past. Devereaux couldn’t help but smile. She then booted the ball across the field-“Go, Tornadoes!”-and the camera angle dropped precipitously, as if the operator had lost all strength in his arm; a pair of black penny loafers over white socks filled the screen. Devereaux glanced over at the father; he was still wearing the same shoes and socks. He had filmed his own feet. On the tape now, the father’s voice again: “Lou, if I had e-mail capacity at this soccer field, I’d beam Harvey a freaking shitogram!”

Back on the screen, another violent camera spasm and a close-up of a big white belly escaping from under a gold jersey and a booming voice that Devereaux recognized as the coach’s-“Gracie, stop her!” Abruptly back to the field: Gracie was running full speed then sliding, feet first, and kicking the ball away from an opponent trying to score, an incredible play… now the blue sky, then suddenly Gracie again, kicking the ball in front of her, racing down the field past her opponents-“Go, Gracie! Score, Gracie!”-to the goal, about to score, pulling her leg back, and… now the father’s shoes again. The room audibly deflated; Agent Jorgenson had damn near kicked Devereaux trying to score the goal for Gracie. On the tape, loud cheers erupted in the background… now the setting sun… and parents standing in the bleachers… and back on the soccer game… and the tape suddenly went silent.

“Did we lose audio?” Devereaux said to Agent Stevens.

“Don’t think so,” Stevens said, checking the connection.

“Increase the volume, run the tape back.”

Stevens did as Devereaux instructed. The tape replayed the same scene of the girls huddled in the middle of the field. There was a muffled sound in the background.

“Again. Louder.”

The same scene again. The same sound in the background.

“What was that? Pant deck? Again.”

The sound came through clearer this time, a male voice yelling, “Panty check.”

“The hell’s a panty check?” Devereaux said to the room.

“He was taunting her.”

All heads turned to the voice behind them: the mother stood in the doorway. She looked like hell. She hadn’t changed her clothes; her hair was wild and untouched; her blouse was hanging out; her skirt was twisted; she was barefooted. She said, “He was saying she’s really a boy, because she’s so good.” The mother turned her glare on the father. “You didn’t do anything, John? You didn’t go across the field and punch that son of a bitch in the mouth? That’s what I would’ve done.”

The father: “I… I didn’t hear him.”

“Because you were working the numbers with Lou,” the mother said.

On the video, Gracie stood motionless in the middle of the field; her head was down and the other girls were gathered around her.

“You let a man say that to Grace, you let another man take her from me, because you were making goddamn sure you get your billion dollars. Grace is gone because you were on the fucking phone.”

The father’s voice on the tape: “Lou, a billion dollars upgrades this geek to manly out there in the real world.”

The mother was looking at the father, but not like she was going to smack him again; instead, with a look of profound disdain.

“A billion dollars won’t make you a man, John Brice. And it won’t bring Grace back.”

And she was gone.

The room was filled with awkward silence until the father’s voice came over the tape: “Lou, only way a geek gets respect in this world is to be a rich geek. Doesn’t matter how smart you are, without money you’re still just a freaking geek.”

The father’s head was hanging so low Devereaux thought it might just disconnect from his neck and roll down his body to the floor. The mother’s words had hurt him more than her hand had yesterday. He sighed. It was not the first time Special Agent Eugene Devereaux had witnessed a marriage destroyed by an abduction; it would not be the last. But he never passed judgment on parents of abducted children, most of whom fit the legal definition of temporary insanity by this stage of an abduction. They often blamed each other. Working through the parents’ emotions was part of the job; the FBI abduction protocol called it “family management.” But few families managed.

The grandmother went to the father and stood next to him; she put an arm around him and patted his back.

Devereaux took a deep breath to regain focus. He could not concern himself with the parents’ marriage. His only concern was the girl on the videotape. He was again staring at the screen, at jerky images of the ground, the sky, the ground, the sky, the parking lot, the parents, the spectators- What the hell was the father doing with the goddamn camera? — when he spotted something.

“Stop! Run it back!”

Stevens reversed the tape.

“There-stop!”

The picture was frozen on the people in and around the bleachers. Devereaux stepped to the screen and pointed to the image of a white male with blond hair and wearing a black cap and a plaid shirt. The view was from the rear but Devereaux knew.

“That’s our man.”

The man was mostly blocked out by a bigger man standing next to him: white male, tall, stocky, flattop, with a large dark spot on his left arm partially visible under the sleeve of his black tee shirt. A tattoo.

To the father: “You know these people?”

The father shook his head. “No.”

To Stevens on the camcorder: “Blow this frame up.” Devereaux touched the screen at the big man’s arm. “And that tattoo.”

To Agent Floyd: “Get the coach in here.”

The tape ran again: a shot of the parking lot, more deal talk from the father, more game action, Gracie hitting the ground hard-“Hey, she tripped Gracie!” Agent Jorgenson blurted out-back on the tape, the victim jumping up and running all out again, loud cheers, the camera jumping around again, the father’s feet, other feet, now a shot of another camcorder-“Yeah, Tornadoes!”-more shots of the sky, the grass, the bleachers, a pair of white soccer shoes, one with the laces untied “I didn’t tie her shoe,” the father said as if he were confessing to a crime.

— and the victim appeared close up again. Her flushed face glistened with perspiration; her hand reached up to the camera.

“Is she bleeding?” Devereaux asked.

Stevens ran the tape back.

“She is bleeding, from her elbow.”

The father’s eyes dropped down to his arm; he grabbed his sleeve and pulled it around to reveal the underside. The light blue material was stained a dark brown in several spots. He looked up at Devereaux.

“This is Gracie’s blood,” he said.

Was Grace dead?

From that moment in the park Friday night when the coach said her brother had asked for Grace-when the thought Grace was kidnapped first took shape-Elizabeth had prayed that it was about ransom- You don’t ransom a dead girl, she had heard an FBI agent say-and she had waged war with her mind. Her mind wanted desperately to force her into a dark world, to reveal to her all the possibilities, the maybes, the what ifs, to torture her with vile, horrible, gruesome images of her daughter being subjected to the sick desires of a sexual predator; but she had fought it off, beaten it back, blocked it out, refused to watch… until now.

Grace wasn’t taken for money.

Sitting on the marble floor of the steam shower, she had unconditionally surrendered to her mind’s dark side and allowed it to torture her with those images, to display them as graphically as if she were an eyewitness. And Elizabeth Brice wondered, as she had wondered once before: If for all intents and purposes you are already dead, is suicide still a mortal sin?

“Why, God?”

Steam inundated the shower. Elizabeth’s legs were curled around the drain; her tears mixed with the hot water. She was alone in her despair and wondering if she could slit her wrists with the safety razor she was holding. Once before evil had entered her life and caused her to entertain suicide, to seriously debate the various ways by which to end her life as if she were reading a menu at a restaurant. Once before she had stood on the precipice of death and peered over into the abyss, only to be saved by a child. This child. Grace had saved her life. Now, ten years later, evil had come back for Grace.

“Why did you let evil take her, too?”

She had lived only because of Grace. Without Grace, why live? She imagined her blood flowing out of her veins and swirling down into the drain until all the life had emptied from her. She put the razor to her wrist and pressed the blade into her skin and was about to slide it across her veins and spill her blood when a sudden surge of rage swelled her muscles and brain cells like a narcotic, hate and anger once again energizing her mind and body and driving her up off the marble.

Elizabeth Brice wanted to kill someone, but not herself. She wanted to kill the abductor. And she had the money to do it.

Two hundred children a year die at the hands of sexual predators in the United States. Those few cases always capture the public’s undivided attention. FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux had investigated one hundred twenty-seven such cases. Consequently, he was accustomed to the media events child abductions inevitably became.

But this case was different. Maybe it was because Gracie was a rich white blonde girl who lived in a mansion with murals on the ceiling; maybe it was because her father’s face was on the cover of Fortune magazine; or maybe it was just a slow news cycle. But this case was fast moving beyond anything he had previously experienced. There was an energy in the air, building with each passing hour without Gracie’s recovery, along with the number of people on the front lawn of the Brice mansion, where Devereaux now stood on this sunny Sunday afternoon. He was flanked by the local mayor and police chief and facing microphones clumped together on a stand, TV cameras, reporters, and beyond them, in the street, the residents of Briarwyck Farms. They had posted missing child fliers with Gracie’s image on every car, printed Gracie tee shirts, tied pink ribbons to car antennae, mailboxes, and trees, and pinned a Gracie button on every shirt and lapel.

There was a time when media briefings made Devereaux feel important, a black agent born in the Louisiana backwoods directing a major FBI case; now these briefings just made him tired. He stepped forward.

“I’m FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux. The FBI is involved in this case at the request of Chief Ryan. Unless the victim is transported across state lines, jurisdiction is solely local. But we have offered our resources to assist Chief Ryan and his investigation.”

Devereaux always maintained the pretense that the locals were in charge of the case. They were legally, but not actually. Locals like Chief Ryan understood that they didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of finding an abducted child without the FBI-and they didn’t mind sharing the failure with the Feds when the child’s body was found.

“The status of our investigation of the abduction of Gracie Ann Brice is as follows: Gracie has been missing for forty-two hours. She was taken from Briarwyck Farms Park here in Post Oak at approximately six P.M. Friday by a white male, twenty to thirty years old, six foot, two hundred pounds, blond hair, wearing a black cap and a plaid shirt. An artist’s sketch of the suspect has been distributed to the media. We are pursuing two parallel investigative tracks: the first is to find Gracie, and that is our primary consideration; the second is to identify and locate possible suspects, starting with registered sex offenders. We urge any citizen who may have seen Gracie or the suspect or who has any information to please contact our hot-line number on the missing child fliers. We need your help. Questions?”

Devereaux pointed to the first reporter.

“Agent Devereaux, do you suspect family involvement?”

“No.”

“Have they taken polygraphs?”

“Not yet.”

The next reporter: “Can you confirm that Gracie’s shorts were found at the park?”

“Blue soccer shorts and a single white soccer shoe were found. We believe them to be Gracie’s.”

And the next, not waiting to be acknowledged: “Do you have any leads?”

“We’re taking calls, reviewing videotapes of the soccer games Friday night, developing a profile of the abductor-”

From the crowd: “Forty-two hours and all you’ve got is a blond man in a black cap?”

Devereaux sighed and felt tired. “Yes.”

Shouted from the back: “Was Gracie sexually assaulted?”

That was the question they always asked. Why? Why did they want to know whether a little ten-year-old girl was raped? What the hell do they think a sexual predator did with her, take her to dinner and a goddamn movie? They know damn well what he did to her, but they wanted him to say it, to provide the fear factor sound bite for the evening news teaser-fear causes more viewers to tune in. But he never played their game. Even if he knew, which he didn’t, at least it wasn’t confirmed, FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux would never tell. Not until the body was located. Until he knew for sure the child was dead.

Gracie Ann Brice deserved that much.

A mile away, Ben Brice stood in the middle of soccer field no. 2, a solitary figure in the vast, vacant park. He had come out before the FBI reopened the park for that night’s candlelight vigil to retrace Gracie’s last known movements Friday afternoon; he had to be where she had been.

He had to know.

If not for ransom, why would someone take Gracie? For sex? Ben Brice had seen the evil in man, so that was a possibility. Perhaps even a probability. But not a certainty, as the FBI seemed to have concluded. Sexual predators work alone, Agent Devereaux had said. But the blond man in a black cap hadn’t been alone; two men had been here at her game.

Ben first had to learn how Gracie had been taken. He now walked toward the low bleachers. According to John, Gracie’s game had ended and she had come to him about here. Ben stopped. The other parents had been in the bleachers and the two men just behind. John had spoken with Gracie, then she and the other girls had gone to the concession stand. John had watched them all the way to the building.

Ben walked that way.

Children abducted by strangers have a life expectancy of three hours, that TV report had said. When Gracie had walked this way Friday night, not forty-eight hours ago, had she only three hours of life left? Something inside Ben said no. Maybe it was the strange way their lives were bonded together: he knew that if Gracie were dead, he surely would be as well. Maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to accept the idea that he would never see her again.

Or maybe, just maybe, she was still alive.

When he was almost to the concession stand, Ben stopped and turned back, just as Gracie had when she had waved to John: an innocent little girl waving to her father, unaware she was walking into an ambush. Ben checked the compass on his watch to get his bearings. He was now facing due south toward the distant soccer and softball fields and the homes that bordered the park beyond the tall brick wall. To the east were tennis courts and the wall bordering that side of the park. To the west was the parking lot a good hundred meters away, too far to drag an abducted child through a crowd of people. The brick walls bordered the south and east sides of the park and the parking lot the west; none were likely escape routes for the abductor. That left only the northern route.

Through the woods.

Ben walked around to the rear of the concession stand. The backside of the building was a solid brick facade with a single service door and no windows. A small clearing separated the building from the woods. Ben got down on his hands and knees and examined the ground. He closed his eyes and ran his fingers through the blades of grass like a blind man reading Braille. And he knew.

The abductor had grabbed her right here.

But how had he gotten her back here alone? And how had he kept her quiet?

Ben stood and walked into the woods. Yesterday, he had been running and his mind had been clouded with fear and thoughts from the past, so he had not focused on his surroundings. Now he stepped slowly; his eyes searched the ground, the underbrush, and the trees for any sign of Gracie. His skills came back to him without conscious recall.

Less than ten meters into the woods, a shiny object highlighted by the sunlight through the canopy caught Ben’s eye. He squatted, moved several leaves, and picked up the object between his thumb and forefinger. He placed it in the palm of his left hand: a silver star attached to a broken silver chain. He recalled the day he had taken Gracie to the silversmith shop in Taos to have this star put on this chain. The proprietor had examined the star and said, “This here’s the real thing.” Gracie had said she would wear it always.

Ben stood, slipped the star and chain into his shirt pocket, and snapped the flap button. He continued deeper into the woods. He soon arrived at the location where her shorts and shoe had been found; yellow crime-scene tape was wrapped around the trees guarding the little clearing.

The abductor had grabbed Gracie behind the concession stand and taken her through the woods to this position. He had stopped here to… Ben fought back his emotions and focused. The abductor had left her shorts and shoe here and had… what? Taken her to his vehicle?

Ben walked through the woods to the nearby road, climbed the low embankment, and stood on the rock shoulder. The road was old, and the asphalt surface was potholed; there were only two narrow lanes, barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It was not a major traffic route.

Did the abductor leave his vehicle here while he went to Gracie’s game? Or did the other man on the tape drive the vehicle to this position while the abductor grabbed Gracie and carried her through the woods? Were they working together?

Ben started to climb down, but he stopped; the shoulder was standing room only, too narrow to park a vehicle without blocking the road. He knelt and examined the shoulder where a car might have pulled over and waited for the abductor to arrive with Gracie. He noticed a rock that glistened. He touched his finger to the shiny rock; it was wet. He put his finger to his nose and sniffed.

Oil.

Little Johnny Brice can taste his own blood that is flowing from his nose and mouth. He is curled up in a fetal position on the ground; his arms are wrapped around his head; he is crying. This is the worst beating yet, and it isn’t over. Luther Ray is sitting astride him, hitting and taunting, taunting and hitting; his fists feel like iron hammers each time they impact John’s body. Little Johnny Brice is praying to God to let him die so the pain will stop.

John opened his eyes. The carpet beneath his face was wet. He was curled up in a fetal position on the floor of his walk-in closet. He had given his shirt to the FBI then come upstairs to clean up. He had showered and come into his closet to dress. But the images of Gracie and the abductor had returned, and he had started crying again. He could not stop thinking of her pain.

Please, God, let her pain stop.

Kate found John sitting alone in his closet, just as she had found him sitting alone in his room so many times as a boy. Back then, he’d been hurt by the bullies; today, he’d been hurt by his wife. It had been bad back then; it was worse today.

She sat down on the floor next to him. She put her arm around him, and he laid his head in her lap, just as he had so many times. She stroked his hair as she had back then, and she said the same words.

“John, try to have faith. You’ve got to trust that there’s a reason for this, that there’s a reason for everything that happens to us in life, even the bad things. God has-”

John’s head lifted, and he sat up abruptly.

“No, Mom, you’re wrong! You were wrong back then and you’re wrong now! There was no reason for my getting beat up by those bullies, and there’s no reason for Gracie getting kidnapped by some sick pervert. There’s no reason, no plan, no purpose, no grand scheme to all this-it wasn’t meant to be! It’s just random acts of violence. Mean people doing bad things. You go to Mass and you believe all that shit Father Randy says-and that’s all it is, Mom. Shit!”

John stood and walked out. Kate Brice covered her face and cried because she could not help her son now, just as she could not help him back then.

FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux was back in the command post examining the blow-ups of the two men from the videotape and the big man’s tattoo. The large room was quiet-which was exactly wrong. Forty-three hours after an abduction, the phones should be ringing off the hook with hot tips. But the phones were silent.

Where the hell were the calls?

Devereaux removed his reading glasses, closed his eyes, and rubbed his face. When he opened his eyes, Agent Jorgenson was walking his way. She had a muscular build and short brown hair. She was wearing a blue nylon FBI jacket, jeans, and sneakers and carrying brown folders under her arm. He liked Jorgenson. She reminded him of his daughter; she had the same athletic bounce in her step and the same intellectual curiosity. She wanted to learn. She was still in her one-year probationary appointment, but she had already grasped an understanding of the job; it wasn’t about the glory of solving a high-profile case or the ego of apprehending a Most Wanted or Washington’s public relations obsession. It was about the victim. The job was always and only about the victim.

“Why’s it so dead?” Agent Jorgenson said when she arrived; she plopped down in a chair. “Is this normal?”

“No.”

“It’s like she just disappeared.”

“A ten-year-old girl doesn’t just disappear.”

“What are her chances-that she’s still alive?”

“Not good. Statistically, no chance at all.”

“Damn.”

“Just do your job, Agent Jorgenson. Focus on the evidence.”

She nodded. “Yes, sir. You’re good in front of cameras.”

“Too much experience. So, Jorgenson, what do they grow up there in

… where in Minnesota are you from?”

“Owatonna. Corn mostly. For the ethanol.”

“Farmer’s daughter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“My grandfather was a farmer. Cotton. Used to help him pick it when I was a kid. It was an uncomplicated life.”

“I wanted excitement.”

“Well, Agent, you’ve found it.” He pointed at her brown folders. “What do you have for me?”

“We took blood samples from the family to compare to the blood on the father’s shirt. DNA tests are underway.”

“Good. What else?”

“Background reports on the family.”

“Proceed.”

Devereaux did not expect the family backgrounds to reveal anything of importance, but he had learned the hard way to never overlook the routine aspects of the investigation.

“Alrighty,” she said, opening the first brown folder. “The father, he’s some kind of genius-Ph. D. from MIT in algorithms, whatever that is, one-ninety IQ… I didn’t know they went that high.”

“They don’t,” Devereaux said. “At least not in the Bureau.”

She gave him a little smile then continued. “He founded BriceWare, going public this week, you know all that. He and the mother married ten years ago. He was at MIT, she was at Justice in D.C., Assistant U.S. Attorney. Five years.”

“Really?”

“Yes, sir. Maiden name was Austin. Grew up in New York. Her father was murdered when she was only ten.”

“Same age as Gracie.”

“First in her class at Harvard Law, a rising star at Justice. Then she up and quit, married Brice, moved to Dallas.”

“No accounting for love.”

“They’re an odd couple, aren’t they? And the way she slapped him yesterday, and cut him down this morning…” Jorgenson shook her head. “And how she talks to the local cops, and to us, so angry and ordering everyone around like we all work for her.”

“Her child’s been abducted, Agent. Cut her some slack.”

“You were very, uh, diplomatic with her.”

He nodded. “Two rules, Agent Jorgenson, to keep in mind in abductions. Rule number one: this isn’t actually our case. We’ve got no jurisdiction, not legally anyway. The locals generally defer to us, but technically we’re invited guests. So act like a guest. Rule number two: odds are the child’s already dead by the time we arrive on scene, so if the mother wants to cuss you out, tell you you’re the dumbest cop on the face of the earth, you say, ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ You respect the fact that she’s lost her child… and that she’s probably halfway to nuts by the time you meet her. You give the parents free rein with their emotions. They need it more than you need to prove you’re a tough FBI agent in control of the case. Getting into a pissing contest with the parents won’t put you one step closer to finding the victim or apprehending the abductor. And that’s your job, Agent Jorgenson. Don’t let your ego get in the way of doing your job.”

“Yes, sir.” She frowned. “But you’re still going to make her take a polygraph?”

“Absolutely. If FBI resources are committed to a case, we do it by the book- and the book says to polygraph the parents. But I ask. I don’t order. Works just as well.” He gestured at Jorgenson’s file. “Find out who she worked for at Justice. I know some people over there.”

“I did. Her immediate supervisor was named James Kelly.”

“Jimmy?”

“You knew him?”

“Yeah, we came up through the Academy together. He went to law school at night then moved over to Justice. He was out in L.A. last I heard… What do you mean, knew him?”

“He’s dead. Hit and run, three years ago.”

“Damn. He was a good guy.” Devereaux sighed. “The good die young. What else you got?”

Jorgenson opened another brown folder. “The grandfather, he’s a retired Army colonel-West Point, Vietnam. Apparently he was some kind of war hero.”

“No kidding?” Devereaux waited for her to continue. She didn’t. “And…?”

She shrugged. “And nothing, sir. He’s classified.”

Devereaux put on his reading glasses and motioned for the folder. She held it out to him; he took it and flipped open the brown folder labeled BRICE, BEN, and scanned the text.

“Full colonel. Green Beret. Seven tours in Vietnam. Six Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, eight Purple Hearts, two Soldier’s Medals, Distinguished Service Cross, Legion of Merit, the Medal of Honor. Yeah, I’d say he was some kind of hero.”

“Why’s he classified?”

“Green Beret, he was probably in Cambodia and Laos when Johnson and Nixon were swearing on TV we weren’t there.”

“The presidents lied about the war?”

He chuckled. “How old are you, Jorgenson?”

“Twenty-six.”

He shook his head. “I can’t even remember twenty-six. Yeah, Jorgenson, presidents lied about the war, the generals, too. I was ROTC, signed up for the tuition plan. Got a hell of an education in Nam. I went over there just hoping to survive my tour. Guys like Brice, they went over there to free the oppressed, just like the Green Beret motto says. They believed it. All they got for their efforts was spit on when they came home.” Devereaux removed his reading glasses and scratched his chin with the earpiece. “Ben Brice… that name sticks in my head for some reason. Get what you can from the Army and run a database search on all public records on him.”

“You think there might be some connection with Gracie’s abduction?”

“You never know what’s connected.” Jorgenson stood to leave. “I want you at the vigil tonight. Our boy might show.”

“Yes, sir. Oh, the coach is here to look at the blow-ups.”

“Bring him in, don’t call me sir, and have someone find Colonel Brice.”

He carries Gracie through the woods to this location. He’s in a hurry, worried someone will discover she’s missing and come looking, or perhaps has and is. His accomplice is waiting twenty meters away in a vehicle leaking oil. But he stops, removes her clothes, and rapes her right here? With so many people in the park, possibly searchers already in the woods? With Gracie kicking and screaming and putting up one hell of a fight? She’s a strong girl and afraid of no one-the only way she wouldn’t have fought is if she were unconscious or dead. Did he rape an unconscious or dead victim? Did he kill her here?

No.

Gracie Ann Brice did not die here. Ben Brice had been in the killing fields, knee deep in death; death would forever be a part of him-he had seen death, he had heard death, he could touch, taste, smell, and feel death. But not here.

Gracie had left here alive.

But why did the abductor leave her shorts behind? Ben closed his eyes and remembered working in the shop with her. She had been carving her name into her rocking chair when she paused and said, “Ben, why do you always know when I’m in trouble, when I need you?”

“I don’t know, doll. There’s something in our lives that binds us together. I don’t know what and I don’t know why, but there is a reason.”

God had bonded them together. Ben Brice knew that as well as he knew how to build a rocking chair or kill a man. And he knew that if she came to him, their bond was unbroken. And she was still alive.

Gracie, show me the way. I will come for you.

“Colonel Brice!”

Ben opened his eyes. He was sitting cross-legged inside the crime-scene tape where Gracie’s shorts and shoe had been found. A young FBI agent was jogging through the woods toward him. He arrived out of breath and said, “Colonel Brice, Agent Devereaux needs you back at the command post!”

Jan Jorgenson had been born five years after the Vietnam War ended. Twenty-four years later, she had graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.S. in Education-the only degree her parents would pay for-and a Masters in Criminal Psychology. She had told her parents that school boards across the country considered crim psych the most relevant degree for a teaching career in America’s public schools. They had bought it. Immediately upon graduation, she had applied with the Bureau. Her parents wanted her to be a teacher; she wanted to be Clarice Starling.

So Jan Jorgenson had left the family farm outside Owatonna, Minnesota, driven to Quantico, Virginia, and entered the FBI Academy. She wanted to be a profiler, interviewing and compiling detailed psychological traits of imprisoned serial killers, psychopaths, and sexual predators, and constructing scientific profiles of suspects in pending investigations. But upon graduation from the Academy, she had been assigned to the Dallas field office, where for the last eleven months she had tracked down and interviewed young Arab men who fit the Islamic terrorist profile.

In fact, this was as close as she had ever come to anyone in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, sitting next to the parents and across the Brice kitchen table from two real live FBI profilers, Agents Baxter and Brumley. They looked like partners in an accounting firm.

“Strangers abduct children for sex.”

Agent Brumley had thus opened this meeting with the family. He could have worked up to that, Jan thought. The mother obviously thought the same; her eyes were now drilling holes in Brumley’s bald head. Oblivious, he forged ahead.

“This perpetrator has a long history of sex offenses, I guarantee it.”

The victim’s father looked like he was going to throw up; he abruptly stood and almost ran out of the kitchen just as Colonel Brice walked in and leaned against the wall.

“We’ve constructed a profile,” Agent Baxter said, “a personality print, if you will, like a fingerprint.” He passed out copies to everyone at the table and then read from his copy. “We believe that the timing of the abduction was relevant to a significant stressor in the perpetrator’s life, perhaps the loss of his job or some other personal rejection. And that the abductor is a loner, over thirty and single, immature for his age, has no friends, is unable to maintain a relationship with a female his own age, probably employed in a job involving children, lacks social skills, abuses alcohol or drugs, reacts violently when angered, handles stress poorly, is selfish, paranoid, and impulsive, possesses an inflated self-esteem that cannot handle rejection, and harbors antisocial tendencies.” He looked up. “We’ll release this profile to the media. Hopefully, a citizen can identify someone they know with these traits.”

The mother abruptly stood. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I can.” She held up her copy. “Immaturity, no social skills, selfishness, paranoia, inflated self-esteem, can’t handle rejection-I can identify every one of those traits to someone I know.”

Agent Baxter was almost out of his chair with excitement.

“Who’s that, Mrs. Brice?”

“Every partner in my law firm.”

Agent Baxter exhaled and sat back down, realizing he’d been had. The mother tossed her copy of the profile on the table.

“Look, Agent Baxter,” she said, “cut the psychobabble bullshit. The guy’s a pervert who likes to fuck little girls!”

The mother stormed out of the room. Agent Baxter was visibly taken aback. After an awkwardly long silent moment, Colonel Brice spoke in a quiet voice.

“He wasn’t alone. There were two men, probably the two men on the videotape.”

“Mr. Brice,” Agent Brumley said, “sexual predators work alone, that’s proven. They’re what we call ‘loner deviants.’ ”

“I was at the park,” the colonel said, “retracing Gracie’s steps. He grabbed her behind the concession stand and took her through the woods to an accomplice waiting for him in a vehicle leaking oil. He didn’t work alone.”

“Then why did he leave her shorts in the woods?” Agent Baxter asked.

“Because he wanted them found.”

Agent Baxter frowned. “ Why? ”

“So you’d do just what you’re doing-hunting for a sexual predator.”

“Are you okay, Mrs. Brice?”

Elizabeth was sitting in her formal living room-now the FBI’s command post-and staring across the table at Agent Devereaux.

“No, I’m not okay. My daughter’s been abducted.”

“Mrs. Brice, I can still get a psychologist in here.”

“No.”

She had gained control of her emotions again. Her mind was alert and angry again. She had a plan. And it required a banker, not a psychologist.

“Let me know if you change your mind. Now, Mrs. Brice, what kind of kid is Gracie? See, with these guys, it’s all about control. They like to intimidate their victims, make the victim feel helpless and cornered so they feel powerful. What would Gracie do if she was cornered?”

“She’d fight.”

“Good. That’s the key to her survival.”

“She will survive.”

Agent Devereaux nodded. “Yes, ma’am. So, Mrs. Brice, you used to work our side of the street?”

“Yes.”

A little smile. “What made you go over to the dark side?”

She paused. “Life took me there.”

The agent frowned, then he said, “Well, then you understand why I need polygraphs.”

“You said it wasn’t random, that she was targeted. Now you think one of us did it?”

“No, ma’am. All I’m saying is, the Bureau is committing extensive resources to finding your daughter and the man who took her. But we’ve been burned before- you remember the Susan Smith case, said she was carjacked, her kids abducted? Turned out she drowned them herself. We must eliminate any family involvement.”

Elizabeth glared at Agent Devereaux, the rage making a move to escape the darkness. “I just left your two brilliant profilers in my kitchen. I listened to them telling me that a predator abducted my little girl for sex.” She slammed her fist down on the table. “Goddamnit! And now you’re telling me you want polygraphs of me and my husband?”

Agent Devereaux nodded. “Yes, ma’am. And Colonel Brice and his wife, and the household staff. Mrs. Brice, I know it’s an intrusion, but from our standpoint, it’s always a possibility. Fact is, only a couple hundred children each year are abducted by strangers. The rest are family related.”

He reached across the table and took her clenched fists in his hands. She refused to allow the tears to come.

“Look, Mrs. Brice, this isn’t a family abduction, I know that. But Washington doesn’t. And I just got off the phone with my superiors, requesting authorization for additional staffing-ten more agents to help find Gracie. So this ends well. Do this, Mrs. Brice, so the Bureau will give me more people to find your daughter. Do it for Gracie.”

“I’ll do it.”

The voice came from behind them. Elizabeth pulled her hands free of Agent Devereaux’s and turned. Her father-in-law was standing in the door. She started to object just because Ben Brice was a drunk and she hated him. But something in his eyes made her hold her tongue. She turned back to Agent Devereaux.

“I want it done here. I don’t want us on TV being marched into the police station.”

Agent Devereaux said, “We’re setting up in the library.”

Ben entered the library to a young FBI agent holding his hand out to him. “Mr. Brice, I'm Agent Randall.”

Randall was thirty, glasses, an accountant trying hard to be sociable. He was holding a rubber tube.

“If you’ll remove your shirt, Mr. Brice, I’ll strap the pneumograph tube around your chest.” Agent Randall moved around behind Ben, continuing his friendly chatter. “Nothing to be nervous about. A polygraph machine measures your breathing rate, your blood pressure-”

Ben unsnapped the cuffs of his shirt and then the front snaps.

– “your pulse rate, and your skin’s reflex to an electrical flow. See, the idea is, when someone’s lying they-”

Ben slipped the shirt off his back.

“ Jesus! ”

Ben felt Agent Randall’s eyes on his back; his chatter had been cut short. After a moment, Randall reached around Ben from behind to connect the tube; his hands were trembling.

“Is that, uh, is that too tight, Mr. Brice? It doesn’t hurt this… these… your back?”

“No.”

Agent Randall returned to Ben’s view. “Okay, where was I? Oh, you can sit down, Mr. Brice.”

Ben sat in a leather chair next to the polygraph; it looked like a laptop computer. The leather was cool on his bare back. Agent Randall stepped in front of him.

“This is an electrode,” Agent Randall said.

He took Ben’s hand and slipped a small sleeve onto the tip of his right index finger.

“And this is just an ordinary blood-pressure cuff, like at the doctor’s.”

The agent wrapped the cuff around Ben’s upper right arm and stepped back.

“Okay, I, uh, I guess we’re ready.” Agent Randall sat in a chair behind the machine and to Ben’s right. “Mr. Brice, I’m going to ask you several basic questions, just to get you comfortable so I can establish a baseline. Please breathe steadily, remain calm, and don’t take deep breaths. And answer each question truthfully with a yes or no. Okay?”

Ben nodded.

Agent Randall’s first question: “Is your real name Ben Brice?”

“Yes.”

“Are you Gracie Ann Brice’s grandfather?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever taken a polygraph exam, commonly known as a lie-detector test?”

“No.”

That was a lie.

Ben closed his eyes and recalled his first lie-detector test: he is naked, his arms and ankles are strapped to a wood chair, and his eyes are tracking two wires taped to his testicles and running along the concrete floor to a battery-powered field telephone with a hand crank manned by a grinning sadist. The small room reeks with the smell of urine and feces.

The North Vietnamese Army officer administering the test is determined to discover whether Brice, Ben, colonel, 32475011, 5 April 46, is lying about American troop presence in North Vietnam; certainly an American officer of his rank was not operating alone this close to Hanoi. He thought the American colonel would have succumbed to the beatings with the fan belts. Big Ug, as the Yanks called Captain Lu, is an artist with a fan belt; he carved up the colonel’s broad back like a woodcarver cutting designs into a block of wood. But, to his great surprise, the colonel revealed only his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth.

However, this test has proved particularly effective at convincing the reluctant Americans to reveal their secrets; the prisoners call it the Bell Telephone Hour. They enjoy their gallows humor, these Yanks. Fortunately, prior to his untimely demise, Uncle Ho had advised his officers that the Geneva Convention did not apply to the American prisoners; since there is no declared war between the United States of America and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, there are no American prisoners of war, Ho Chi Minh had said. Only American war criminals. Who will never forget their stay at the San Bie prison camp, if Major Pham Hong Duc has anything to say about it.

He nods at Lieutenant Binh, who cackles as he turns the crank, sending an electrical charge racing through the wires and into the colonel’s genitals. The American’s body snaps taut as the charge surges through him. That’s odd, the major thought. Most of the Americans scream like banshees and lose control of their bladder and bowels when the charge hits them-hence the hole in the chair and the bucket beneath-but the colonel only grits his teeth and takes the pain, his arms and legs straining mightily against the leather bindings “Mr. Brice! Mr. Brice! Are you okay?”

Ben’s eyes snapped open. His teeth were clenched, he was sweating and breathing hard, and his fingers were digging into the leather arms of the chair. Agent Randall was standing over him.

“Your respiration’s off the chart!”

“They’re clean,” Agent Randall said.

FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux was chewing on the earpiece of his reading glasses. He and Agent Randall were standing in the command post next to Devereaux’s desk.

“Didn’t figure this to be family related. But headquarters said to follow the protocol.”

“The grandfather,” Randall said, “his back looks like someone carved him up with a steak knife.”

“He was an Army colonel. Must’ve been a POW.”

“In Vietnam?”

“Yeah.”

“They tortured American prisoners?”

Devereaux chuckled. “They still teach history in college?”

Randall was looking at him like a kid who didn’t know what he had done wrong.

“Yeah, the NVA tortured our guys, and none of that Guantanamo Bay kind of torture, making them listen to Barry Manilow twenty-four/seven. NVA beat our guys, electrocuted them, broke their arms and legs…”

Randall was now looking past Devereaux to the door. “Here he is,” he said, and he walked off.

Devereaux turned. The lean blond man walking toward him was maybe six feet and one-eighty, but he now seemed bigger in Devereaux’s eyes.

“Colonel Brice-”

A momentary pause. “You’ve done some homework.”

“Part of the job, sir.”

The colonel nodded. “No need to address me as colonel. Or sir.”

“You earned it, sir. I was a lieutenant, ROTC, Texas A amp;M. Course, drilling on a practice field didn’t exactly prepare me for Vietnam.”

“Neither did West Point.”

They both smiled, sharing a thought private to combat soldiers who had lived to try to forget it. Devereaux put on his reading glasses, reached across the desk, and picked up the blow-ups.

“The coach couldn’t ID the men from these blow-ups,” Devereaux said. “And this tattoo… I’ve never seen anything like it in the military, thought maybe you might’ve. Top half is covered by his shirtsleeve, but what’s showing looks like Airborne wings, except for the skull and crossbones.” He held the blow-up of the tattoo out to Colonel Brice. “I’m running it through the Bureau’s gang database. Could be a biker tattoo. Says ‘viper.’ ”

The colonel abruptly snatched the blow-up from Devereaux’s hand then stared at the image as if it were the face of Satan. The blood drained from his face. He dropped down hard in a chair. His hand released the blow-up; it floated to the floor. He leaned over and covered his face with his hands.

“Colonel, you okay?” Devereaux retrieved the blow-up. “You seen this tattoo before?”

Colonel Brice ran his fingers through his blond hair, then he slowly sat up. He inhaled and exhaled like a doctor was checking his heart. He spoke without looking at Devereaux.

“It’s not a biker tattoo.”

“How do you know?”

The colonel’s jaw muscles clenched and unclenched several times. He unsnapped the cuff of his left sleeve and began rolling it up his arm. He was wearing a black military style watch. His forearm was tanned with sun-bleached blond hair; his upper arm was pale where the sun had not done its damage. The distinctive feature of his upper arm, however, was the Airborne eagle wings etched in black ink in his white skin; but in the center of the wings where the open parachute was supposed to be, signifying a soldier’s survival of jump school, was a skull and crossbones instead. Arched above the wings were words in an Asian script, and below that, in English, SOG-CCN; and below the wings, in quotes, VIPER. Devereaux leaned down and held the blow-up against the colonel’s arm; the portion of the tattoo visible in the blow-up matched up precisely with the bottom portion of the colonel’s tattoo.

Devereaux rose, removed his reading glasses, and waited for the colonel to speak. He didn’t press him; he couldn’t. This man was a real goddamn American hero. When Colonel Brice finally spoke, his eyes remained on his boots.

“SOG team Viper conducted those covert operations presidents lied about. SOG was Studies and Observation Group, CCN was Command and Control North. We conducted cross-border operations in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. Our mission was to disrupt shipments on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, assassinate NVA officers, recon for air strikes… none of which officially happened. We operated off the books.”

Devereaux pointed to the Asian script on the colonel’s arm.

“These other words, they’re Vietnamese?”

The colonel nodded.

“What do they say?”

The colonel hesitated a moment, then he said, “ ‘We kill for peace.’ The unofficial Green Beret motto.” He now turned his eyes up to Devereaux. “Damn hard thing to get rid of, a tattoo.”

Devereaux handed the blow-up of the big man to the colonel.

“This is the man with that tattoo. Do you recognize him? Be kind of hard to forget that scar.”

The colonel stared at the photo of the big man; Devereaux thought he saw a hint of recognition cross the colonel’s face. But Colonel Brice finally shook his head slowly and said, “No.”

“How many men got this tattoo?” Devereaux asked.

“Viper was a twelve-man heavy recon team, operated for four years before I joined up. Casualties were high. Maybe twenty-five men got that tattoo, maybe more. I only knew the eleven men I served with.”

“So we’ll pull SOG records-”

“You’ll never get those records, if they even exist.” The colonel stood and rolled his sleeve down. “Agent Devereaux, my wife knows what I did over there, but my son doesn’t. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I understand, sir.”

Devereaux thought, Only a Vietnam war hero would feel obliged to keep his heroism from his own son.

“He’s seen the tattoo,” the colonel said, “but he doesn’t know what it means. And he knows nothing about Viper team.”

“What about Mrs. Brice?”

“Elizabeth? No. She knows I served in Vietnam, nothing more. She wouldn’t understand. Anyone who wasn’t there, they just can’t understand.”

“Amen to that.”

The colonel snapped the buttons on the cuff of his sleeve and said, “Agent Devereaux, I’d consider it a personal favor if you didn’t mention that man’s tattoo in front of my family.”

Devereaux studied the colonel a moment and said, “All right, Colonel, we’ll keep it between us for now. Just as well, I don’t want to go public with the tattoo anyway, in case I can get the names of those Green Berets.”

The colonel stared at Devereaux but it was as if he were looking straight through him. Eugene Devereaux had been Army infantry in Vietnam. A grunt. Green Berets were the Army’s elite, trained in the art of killing. Ben Brice did not have the look of a trained killer. He was not a physically intimidating man, as were the Green Berets Devereaux had seen in the Army. Nor was he the macho commando stereotype. In fact, he seemed almost too gentle a man to have done what Green Berets did in Southeast Asia four decades ago. But there was something in his eyes that told Devereaux otherwise.

His blue eyes betrayed him like a cheating wife.

Gracie was in pain, scared and crying and praying to be saved. And her father wasn’t doing a damn thing to save her. He didn’t know how.

Instead, Little Johnny Brice was staring at a life-sized image of his daughter’s soccer photo attached to the side of the concession stand under a banner with WE LOVE YOU, GRACIE painted in big letters; stacked below were pink ribbons, cards, fancy balloons, and hundreds of flower arrangements and teddy bears. The concession stand was now a memorial to his daughter.

Gracie was gone because her father wasn’t much of a man.

John had not wanted to attend this vigil, but the FBI said it was important to appeal to the abductor’s sympathy-if he saw on television the pain he was causing her family, he might let her go. But John could think only of Gracie’s pain.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. John turned and looked into the eyes of his father, this man he had called colonel and now Ben but never father or dad, who once was a hero with a family but who now was a drunk with a dog. His mother had told him that his father was a good man destroyed by a bad war; that terrible things had happened to him in Vietnam; that the war had ended but Ben Brice had never found his peace.

John Brice had never allowed himself the slightest sympathy for his father.

“Come on, son,” Ben said, gently pulling John away from the makeshift memorial.

His son’s eyes remained locked on Gracie’s image. He said in a whisper, “I didn’t tie her shoe.”

Ben turned John away, and they walked past the local mayor giving a TV interview-“A safe place, a wonderful place to build your dream home and raise your children”-and around to the front of the building where a young priest was leading the crowd in prayer. Ben and John stood among hundreds of parents and children wearing Gracie buttons and tee shirts with Gracie’s picture on the back and holding candles flickering in the night. Mingling with them were FBI agents; several were inconspicuously videotaping the candlelight vigil with palm-sized camcorders. Agent Devereaux said it was not out of the question that the abductor might show.

“Mr. Brice.” A young blond man and a pregnant woman had come up to John, who turned and looked at them but did not seem to see them. “Mr. Brice,” the young man began again, “I just want to say how sorry I am. We’re having a baby and… I mean…” He glanced at Ben; he was at a loss for words.

“Thanks for your thoughts,” Ben said to the young man.

The couple left. Up front, a young girl stood and sang:

“A-ma-zing Grace, how sweet the sound…”

And the crowd joined in:

“That saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now I’m found, I was blind, but now I see…”

The overhead park lights dimmed slowly until the only light came from the flickering flames of hundreds of candles held high as the people sang.

The stars in the dark Vietnam night seem to flicker in fright, as if flinching at the sound of high-powered weapons firing on full auto and bringing death to this village. But not to this girl. He is determined to save her.

Lieutenant Ben Brice is now carrying the china doll like a football, dodging livestock and running through the burning hamlet toward the jungle where he can hide her. He glances back and trips over a dead pig, sending himself and the china doll sprawling into the dirt. The china doll scrambles up first. Before he can get to his feet, her head explodes like a ripe watermelon; her brains and blood splatter the twenty-two-year-old second lieutenant’s face and fatigues. He looks up to see the major standing there, smoke from the barrel of his. 45-caliber sidearm hanging in the humid air, clouding the Viper tattoo on his bare left arm.

“She was just a girl!” he screams at his SOG team leader.

“She was just a gook,” the major responds calmly, wiping the girl’s blood from his weapon. “They’re all just gooks, Lieutenant. And your job is to kill gooks.”

SOG rules are few but absolute: never leave a live team member behind; never let yourself be captured by the enemy; and never question the team leader in the field. The major turns his back on the naive and idealistic young lieutenant, who violates a SOG rule on his first mission.

“You violated the law of war! And the rules of engagement!”

The major stops, pivots, and two steps later he is towering over the lieutenant, glaring down at him, his blue eyes burning with anger.

“Out here in the bush, I’m the law! I make the rules! And I say we kill VC! We kill livestock that feeds VC! We burn huts that shelter VC! We kill civilians that aid VC! Those are my rules of engagement, Lieutenant!”

The major blows out a breath and calms. He squats in front of his newest disciple, the anger subsided now, and for a moment Ben thinks the major is going to console him, perhaps offer a personal word of encouragement to a young Army soldier unversed in fighting a war in a moral vacuum; instead the major puts the barrel of his. 45 to Ben’s head and says in a steady voice: “Soldier, you ever question what I do out here again, I’ll put a bullet through your head and let the VC make soup out of you, too. I guarangoddamntee it.”

The major stands and walks away through smoke and fire and blowing ashes. Ben raises his hand to wipe the blood from his face and sees that his hand is trembling.

Ben felt proud when he had learned the major had selected him to fill a vacancy on SOG team Viper. The major was thirty-seven and a living legend in the Special Forces. Ben Brice was twenty-two and naive. “You’re a goddamn warrior now, Brice,” the major said after Ben got his Viper tattoo in Saigon. “One of us.” And he was proud when they ambushed that NVA convoy heading south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos, bearing supplies that would aid the enemy and arms that would kill Americans.

Today, he is not proud.

Lieutenant Ben Brice slowly stands and looks down upon the china doll, her arms and legs splayed grotesquely, her vacant eyes staring back at him, the final moment of her life frozen on her face-a face that will haunt him the rest of his nights. He turns and walks away, leaving the china doll and his soul to rot in the rich black soil of the Quang Tri province of South Vietnam.

God has a plan for Ben Brice, or so his mother had always said and so he had always believed, right up until that dark night in Vietnam. Each evening now, thirty-eight years after the fact, Ben would sit in his rocking chair on the porch of the small cabin he had built with his own hands, watch the sun set over Taos, and wonder what God’s plan had been and why it had gone so wrong. Now, staring at the stars above his son’s mansion outside Dallas, the vague outline of an answer was taking shape in his mind.